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Thursday, July 9, 2015

Philosophical discussions can be daunting. This is because
there are so many areas of philosophy, so many competing ideas, and so many
concepts that really push one to think deeply about issues, sometimes trivial
and sometimes important, that makes philosophy challenging.

There was a time when I thought
philosophy amounted to little more than sophistry, arguing over nothing,
thinking deep philosophical thoughts about irrelevant questions, that it was
all semantic word games and esoteric nonsense. I felt that anytime a philosopher gave their opinion
they were obviously just full of it.

About six years ago I began re-reading the works of Immanuel
Kant at the behest of my friend John J. who recently became an ordained priest
and is a theologian. At that time I was getting back into
linguistics as well, so I picked up Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical
Investigations.

I don't know what it was, but over the years my taste in literature matured and I
developed a love for reading non-fiction, and I grew to appreciate philosophy.

What I learned helped me re-evaluate the importance of philosophy. Philosophy literally means the 'love of wisdom', and who couldn't afford to grow a little bit wiser?

It seems I may have been wrong about
philosophers. They weren't deliberately trying to be sophists, they weren't trying to bamboozle or hoodwink me, it was just that the language philosopher's employed was foreign to
me and, furthermore, it wasn't that they were unintelligible to me because they were all
quacks, but they were unintelligible to me because I simply couldn't speak their
language.

Now a days, whenever I engage with anybody in a
philosophical discussion, I try to keep this in mind. Many people find
philosophy confusing or difficult to grasp as I once did because, like I was
back then, they simply don't speak the language.

Even so, I try to go out of my way to explain things as
simply as I can in a manner which will relay the same concepts and ideas but
without resorting to exclusively esoteric language. Instead of just speaking
about properly basic beliefs, for example, I will first relay what a properly
basic belief is and what it means and why it matters for the discussion we're
having.

I do this because I think that when we are confused we tend
to talk past one another, and it's hard to find common ground when you keep
missing each other at the halfway point. Philosophical misunderstandings are
rather like formation skydivers whipping around uncontrollably, never quite
getting in sync. It can be a dizzying affair.

Recently, a theist reader, whom we'll simply refer to as "Rocky," had some trouble with what I was
saying and accused me of having a "vacuous blog."

I'm sorry he feels that way.

It seems Rocky had several problems with the way I worded some things, and the
fact that I dismissed one of his questions outright (I mean, I wasn't
deliberately trying to be mean, I dismissed it because it was irrelevant
to the conversation. But now I see that in retrospect how it might have seemed
like I was dismissing him as not worth bothering about). He went on to say that

"You operate on a basis of contempt for those who
disagree with your (limited) assessment that God does not exist. You operate
under the misassumption [sic] that your limited intellect can finally decide
the question."

Clearly, we
were talking past each other, and like the analogy of the formation skydivers
spiraling out of control, so too the conversation went.

I wasn't dismissing Rocky's belief that God exists because it's
not a valid philosophical topic, I was dismissing it because it wasn't valid to
the topic of the conversation, which was the logical validity of ignosticism.

At any rate, I amended my language to better reflect
the fact that I wasn't trying to be mean to him (or other theists) by not taking his beliefs seriously but that,
in this case, his presuppositions and heart felt convictions simply had no
baring on the conversation at hand.

That said, his long response to my response raised some
interesting tangential philosophical concerns that I would like to address here
in the spirit of the philosophical discourse. After all, the only way we can
ever make sense of philosophy is to keep having these kinds of conversations.

Forgiving the tone of the language (since I obviously had inadvertently upset
him), he went on to say:

"You have provided no substantive response to
fundamental questions yet you still hold to your intellectually arrogant
position: First: you have utterly failed to provide a logical foundation for
the ultimate and singular efficacy of empiricism as the only basis for logical
argument while using rationalism (logical argumentation) as the basis to simply
STATE that empiricism is the only viable means. That ignores hundreds of years
of rationalist thinking, and a subject with which Kant strove mightily in his
attempt to wed rationalism and empiricism. I must have missed your treatise
that trumped Mr. Kant."

A couple of things are worth mentioning here.

First, anyone who is familiar with my writing on this blog
knows that I am a staunch defender of Kant and that when it comes to discussing
metaphysics I take the Kantian view more often than not.

So Rocky's assumption that I am somehow anti-Kant is simply mistaken.

Presumably, this misconception that I reject Kant arose because he thought I was dismissing his religious beliefs on
the basis that I reject supernaturalism. But this doesn't in any way mean I
dismiss metaphysics. The two are different, after all. As such, I disregard supernatural suppositions that do not carry with them an demonstration for their validity, and I just happen to reject certain kinds of metaphysical assumptions because I don't find them convincing, especially when they have no relevance to the conversation at hand. And so that's what I did.

The second thing I want to say is that I never said that
empiricism was the only viable means of attaining knowledge. I actually can't
know this, nobody can. In fact, this was Kant's very objection to Hume! The truth is, I remain open to the possibility of an underlying metaphysical reality (in the Kantian sense), but it wasn't
my intent to open up a discussion about metaphysics since, once again, it
wasn't related to the topic I was discussing. But I am more than happy to
discuss it with anyone who asks me about what I think and why.

One thing I think we should try and keep in mind is that the dialectic of one person taking a side
and arguing for it can often create a sense of tension between those who take an
opposing side or point of view.

Just to clarify, I don't view the other side as an enemy, which it seems Rocky may have mistook for my official stance. Rather, I think of them as a partner in the greater philosophical discourse. Their opposing views actually help me to consider the objections to
my own philosophical views so I can better defend them or else reject them in light
of a better understanding.

Rocky went on to add:

"Sorry, but I find Aquinas far more satisfying in his
deliberations than your simple excising of God from the human concern because
God can't be described as a "noun." This could only make sense to an
English major such as yourself. You refuse to manfully wrestle with a question
that has interested all thinking peoples since thought arose: that of the
existence of a possible transcendent."

I too find Aquinas highly satisfying. Not only as a
theologian but as a philosopher in the truest sense of the word.

That said, I hope everyone can see that the rest of this
comment represents the very point of contention where the confusion lies. I
wasn't talking about other deliberations or questions regarding the topic of
God's existance, such as transcendence, which is an entirely different
discussion altogether. I was talking about a semantic argument which, in my
estimation, acts as a defeater to the very claim that it is meaningful to talk
about God at all!

What I mean by defeater is that, it seems to me, ignosticism
nulifies the idea of God as a meaningful subject to talk about. Although I've
talked at length on ignosticism as I've tried to develop it more thoroughly as
a semantic argument, it's worth repeating the main premise of the argument
here. Ignosticism, in a nutshell, states that people assume too much about God
(evidenced by the numerous and competing definitions of God which exist), and
then states that because everyone makes their own assumptions about God that
the term "God" becomes incomprehensible to us because it can come to
mean anything and everything.

So, Rocky had claimed that I failed to logically defend
ignosticism by not engaging with other arguments for God, and then became
angered when I dismissed these other deliberations. The reason, though, I think
becomes obvious given the fact that ignosticism defeats any and all arguments for
God by its premise that it's impossible to talk about God in any meaningful
way.

Until this objection is overcome, I really do think
ignosticism is a very strong argument against the theological position. It may
not disprove the possibility of God's existence, but it shows there is an
underlying semantics problem that plagues discussions about God which needs to
be overcome before such discussions can be deemed valid topics of discussion.

Our disgruntled theist however seemed to miss this point and
said,

"And forgive me, I do not speak insultingly here, but
the arrogance of your position is breathtaking. And to think that all of us
missed it because we have trouble understanding something that necessarily
transcends that which it has created."

That's not the case at all.

I think I have sufficiently explained above, and in the
previous post as well, why I dismissed the other deliberations. Nor to I feel I
am being arrogant by sticking to the argument as presented. I am perfectly fine
talking about other theological points of view when that is the topic I am
engaged in, but this was specifically a challenge to ignosticism and I was
treating it as such.

"Well, lets just
throw the whole thing away since it doesn't fit within the human definitional
capability."

That's actually the consequence of ignosticism, yes. Which
is why I think it is such a hard hitting argument against the validity of
theism.

"Lawyerly semantical nonsense."

Well, I could see why one would think this. But it's untrue.
Semantics is literally the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with
meaning.

There are two main areas of semantics: 1) Logical semantics,
which concerns itself with matters such as sense and reference and
presupposition and implication; and 2) lexical semantics, which concerns itself
with the analysis of word meanings and relations between them.

What I view ignosticism to be is a type of semantic argument
that makes use of both logical and lexical semantics and shows that there isn't
any real meaning to the idea of God as commonly talked about. It then discusses
the implications of this and shows that all presuppositions regarding belief in
God are nullified, or defeated, by theism's failure to make God into a
substantive "noun" (or more generally a substantive entity) worth
talking about even though this is how believers are using the idea of God as
expressed by the language they invoke.

Really, at its most basic, ignosticism is defeater to the
theist position that it is in anyway meaningful to talk about God.

I suppose from the perspective of a believer who takes for
granted their presuppositions, this might look like arrogance to them. They
often site the biblical passage Psalm 14:1 that "The fool in his heart
says there is no God."

But this isn't the case. There is no arrogance here. It's
simply a logical argument that raises very real, very devastating objections to
theism (and more broadly speaking to god belief in general).

"Your argument sounds as though you gave birth to an
intellectual child you simply can't give up."

That's merely because nobody has had a good answer which
addresses ignosticism's objections to theism. You don't give up a successful
argument and solid logic simply due to the fact that others have failed to come
up with an adequate defense against it.

Another question our theist friend asked was:

"If God does not exist, what do you, through
empiricism, propose as an alternative to explain the birth of the universe from
nothing?"

I consider such questions a red herring. It also makes
incorrect assumptions about my position, which means it's also a bit of a
strawman.

After all, I never stated ignosticism is disproof for the
existence of God. It is proof of the unintelligibility of God. As such, it
invalidates theism on the basis of a semantic argument, which can be
empirically justified.

I have called ignosticism a justification for atheism in the
past because, it stems to reason, we have to know precisely what it is we are
talking about in order to talk about that thing in any meaningful way. It if is
incomprehensible to us, we simply could not talk about it, and so it might as
well not exist in the first place.

Additionally, for a thing to be substantive, that is having
a firm basis in reality and so important, meaningful, or considerable, it needs
to be verified as such. Ignosticism is the attempt to verify the theistic
position that God is substantive and finds that theism fails.

It fails because, when put to the task to show that there is
a direct link between any given description of God and the meaning people imbue
this God with, they cannot do it. The implication is, God is not a substantive
entity. Now, God may be a conceptual entity, or a conceptualization. Yes, I
know, it's a fancy way of saying God is imaginary. But that's the consequence
of theisms failure to justify a basic substantive noun, which makes ignosticism
a truly devastating semantic argument.

It's the same as saying the theist cannot substantiate their
belief in God because the thing they say they believe in is rendered
incomprehensible when asked to do one simply task--provide a referent for the
thing itself so that a third party (someone other than the believer) can come
along and describe it in such a way that the two descriptions align and thus
allow us to empirically check our descriptions against one another to see
whether or not they relate back to the same thing. This would be the easiest
way to falsify ignosticism. But nobody has been able to do it!

Ignosticism proves God is not a substantive entity, thus
justifies the atheist's skepticism of theism. In other words, because
ignosticism shows there is no substantive entity, the atheistic assumption that
there is no God is rationally warranted.

What I have detailed above is how atheism relates to
ignsoticism. So my dismissal of God, in this case, isn't because of my
consideration of the strengths or weaknesses of other theological
considerations. Although I have considered many and find them lacking for
various reasons seperate from this issue.

As for my idea of what caused the universe, and how
something could come from nothing, I think Lawrence Krauss said it best when he
noted that nothing is unstable.

But this would require a long discussion of the underlying
physics, and although I am familiar with the theories and could relay them, I
would actually recommend consulting with a real physicist, maybe even reading
Krauss's book, A Universe from Nothing.

"Of course, you'll just retreat into a science of the
gaps response indicating that, given enough time and knowledge, the (adequate)
human intellect will finally be In a position to decide. (as though something
finite could ultimately grapple with something that transcends it.)"

Actually, to address this concern, I find the opposite is
true. Theists hold that God transcends the universe and is needed to explain
the universes existence. But a scientist cannot say this as there is no
evidence that God created the universe because there is no empirically valid
evidence for God. Science only seeks to explain the forces, called physical
laws, the govern the universe we live in. As such, it's not an argument from
ignorance. The opposite is true. Not knowing how the universe came to be,
theists posit God -- precisely because they don't know. This is a true argument
from ignorance.

"I'd like to see a defense of the contention that just
because something is too difficult for or ultimately unavailable to human
reason, that thing is of no concern to us since we cannot process it. That
sounds just like cavemen denying that bacteria causes disease."

I don't think anyone is making such a claim here. Besides,
cavemen didn't have science and didn't understand cause and effect, certainly
didn't know about the importance of hygeine, and didn't know how to evaluate
evidence because they didn't have the tools of science. We do. So it's really
not a question of dismissing the unknown, it's whether or not the claims of the
theist can meet the burden of proof. All our theist friend has done is simply
shift the burden of proof, I'm afraid.

"If you claim that the universe was not birthed from
nothing, then you must come to grips with the logical absurdities generated
from the presupposition that the universe has existed in some form (multiversal
or otherwise) for eternity. Note that any response you might make here to
arrive at a comprehensive and satisfying answer must presume the fitness of a
finite human intellect generated from chaotic and random inputs to adjudicate an
eternal truth."

Sometimes in philosophy there is a point where you want to
continue engaging in a philosophical conversation, but you run up against the
limits of your philosophical understanding. I think our friend found his wall.

I don't mean this disparagingly, but the above paragraph
illustrates another problem with we can run into when dealing with big
philosophical concepts, inevitably we are going to run against the limits of
our understanding. Although our friend tries to make use of the philosophical
language that he wants to discuss, it is clear he doesn't quite know how.
Either the ideas are unfamiliar to him or too esoteric to adequately express,
and this leads to a kind of word salad that has no clear meaning. He jumps
around from the topic of the universe's origins, to the limitations of human
intellect, to multiverses, back to eternal truths, and so on. All these things
are interesting topics of discussion, but here they are seemingly thrown
together at random.

In all fairness, everyone is prone to making this mistake.
I've done it too. It happens to the best of us!

"Third: your arguments smack of special pleading.
Ignosticism, by definition, denies the efficacy of the undefineable. At its
root, it does. One could replace the word "God" with any other ill
defined word, and ignosticism would be laughed out of existence for its
juvenile insistence on the human desire for categorization and preoccupation
with forcing any other aspect of reality through such a narrowly defined
filter."

Actually, I would say he is on the verge of grasping it.

In my book title Ignosticism, which is about ignosticism, I
use an analogy that if we replace God with any other substantive noun, in my
example I use suggest using an apple, we can empirically verify the referent
thereby validate, or rather substantiate, that noun as a real thing that exists
in reality and is important, meaningful, and therefore significant.

"It is very unclear to me how materialism can explain
just those things that ARE available to supplemented human senses."

I don't think that is in the scope of materialism.
Materialism is just a consequence that falls out of naturalism, if naturalism
is true. It certainly seems that metaphysical naturalism is true. So, what we
can explain must be capable of being explained within this purview, at least
until otherwise hitherto hidden purviews are opened up to us.

"Are you honestly going to claim that you never doubt
your doubt (or certainty) that something transcendent very possibly brought
this universe into being?"

Yes, I am going to strongly doubt that. Not because I don't
find it an interesting consideration, but it is one I must remain highly skeptical
of because I see no possible way to substantiate let alone justify such an
assumption. It's interesting, but finding it interesting doesn't make it true.
And unable to prove it true, I have no recourse but to remain skeptical.

"The privilege of the theist is that we don't have to
feel guilty about acknowledging said doubt. Just wondering if you ignostics ply
the same waters. Just hoping here that your intellectual arrogance can be
restrained enough to answer honestly."

I don't actually think doubting is the problem here. If
theists doubted enough to be skeptical of the theistic claim they'd become
agnostics. I think the problem is certitude one places in their convictions.
Contrary to the accusations made against me, I am not making such arrogant claims
that I know with any certainty that God does not exist. I believe this, which
is why I am an atheist.

But if I were tasked to prove it either way I know that
I can't. As such, I am also an agnostic. I cannot prove God exists, nor can I
prove he doesn't exist. The existence of a God is possible, but given the world
we observe it just doesn't seem very plausible.

I remain an agnostic atheist
precisely because I recognize there is a difference between what I choose to
believe and what really is. Since I can't know what really is, I take the
skeptical view because I find that believing in something which cannot be
demonstrated is an irrational position to take. If you cannot prove something,
then uncertainty is the natural conclusion. Not knowing. Yet it seems to me
that the privilege of the theist is pretending to know everything while not
being able to substantiate any of their claims. I mean, there's not a nicer way
to say it because that's exactly what all theists do.

Or, think of it another way, if the theist could demonstrate
God's existence, then the question of God's existence would be a moot point. It
would be like having a serious philosophical debate over the existence of
bananas, which we do not do. We know bananas exist. We do not doubt their existence.
Yet when it comes to God, well, doubt it seems is all we really have. Otherwise
we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

A theist by the handle of rockhound570theisthas raised several objections to ignosticism. About a month ago he raised a litany of issues he felt rebutted ignosticism or else felt showed where I failed to logically defend ignosticism. I would have responded sooner, but the truth is I've simply been too busy as of late to find time to respond (writing for a living takes up all my spare time reserved for writing!). But, low and behold, I found a few moments to respond. So what follows will be my best attempt to reply as clearly and concisely to his long email comments as possible and to do my best to answer his criticisms and concerns. Hopefully this exchange, taken in the spirit of a cordial discourse, will help clear up any confusion regarding ignosticism and, more importantly, may be of use to those who continue to grapple with the big questions.

(Just for convenience, I shall refer to our theist has "Rocky" while I will just be "Me".)

Rocky: What you are really claiming as foundational postulates are 1: empirical knowledge is the only valid form of knowledge that an ignostic will accept;

Me: True. An ignostic need not accept any metaphysical assumptions as valid as ignosticism deals with real world grammar of common nouns. It is a linguistics (semantics) argument.

I am not saying that I, as an ignostic, deny other forms of knowledge. I am merely saying than when making an argument from the position of an ignostic no other forms of knowledge are required for the argument to be logically valid.

As an atheist and a skeptic, I leave room for the possibility of other forms of knowledge.

Rocky: 2: that the human intellect IS the final arbiter of the intelligibility of the universe (that our minds can come to ultimate conclusions about things that may transcend them and are possibly not fully available to said minds, and if they are not, such things then acquire inherent meaninglessness because our limited intellects, which were very probably never fully capable of describing them, simply cannot include those things within its subsets of rationality);

Me: What other intellects did you have in mind? And can you prove they exist?

As for the limits of the human intellect, what would that be exactly? I'm not sure that line has been clearly drawn.

I acknowledge the human intellect is not unlimited, that there are conditions which do limit it, and biological factors we must consider that may hinder our intellectual potential. But we also have valuable tools, such as science and technology, to help aid us in overcoming many of these limitations.

So what the exact limitations are on humanity's intellectual capacity (or potential) isn't necessarily all that clear, except that we can always find them out and list them. It would be a massive undertaking to define, list, and catalog all our intellectual limitations.

That said, the semantic argument I offer here is only concerned with understanding basic terms in relationship to the common noun in which these terms are invoked. The etymology of "noun" after all comes from the late Middle English stemming from the Latin nomen or 'name'. It literally means to name the thing itself. This is why when dealing with nouns, especially nouns said to be substantive (meaning: having a firm basis in reality and so important, meaningful, or considerable) I stress the importance of describing the referent, i.e. the thing itself.

There is no abundance of intellect required to verify whether or not the description of the noun as given matches the person, place, or thing it is assigned to. This is why I point out that the easiest way to check for the validity of any given description of a person, place, or thing is to find that thing and simply have someone else describe it too.

If our descriptions match to an overwhelming degree, then odds are we have described the same thing! If not, and our descriptions diverge, then there is a semantic problem.

In my explication of ignosticism, I point out that ignosticism offers two solutions which address why our descriptions (in this case descriptions of God) might not align themselves. They are as follows:

God is a conceptualization, or rather a series of concepts applied to a theological template. This being the case, ignosticism holds that people assume too much about God otherwise the descriptions of God would align more often than they do.*

Descriptions of God are dependent on the prior presuppositions of the believer, thus any description of God will grow more convoluted over time since believers usually change their descriptions of God to fit better with their presuppositions, thus necessitating a tendency for descriptions of God to grow more discrepant over time as well.

These two considerations are explanations for why people's definitions of God do not match, because they are, in essence, describing their own ideas and concepts of what they think God should be, not what God actually is should such a being exist.

If God was a substantive noun, and there was a referent to derive an adequate description from, then our descriptions would match. With matching descriptions we would know what it meant to speak of "God" any time we invoked God language. This not being the case however, we can be fairly certain God is not a substantive entity. Rather, by all appearances God seems to be exactly as we would expect if God were a conceptualization that gets convoluted the more theists try to force him to fit into their ideal image of what God should be.

That is about all the intellectual complexity required to validate ignosticism and its objections.

Nothing more is needed for ignosticism to be accepted as a logically valid argument.

Rocky: 3: the verisimilitude of the scientific approach can ultimately adjudicate all of reality, including those things very probably beyond the scope of its methodology, whether or not it can ever offer full, nonnebulous descriptions of that reality

Me: No. That's scientism. Scientism isn't foundational. But I'd be remiss if I didn't at least add that the scientific method is necessary for us to ultimately make sense of reality. That is, we cannot just throw science out of the window and hope to make sense of it all. It is a requisite tool, and a highly useful tool, in helping us to understand the world.

Rocky: 4: nothing that is unavailable to the human senses can ultimately find any traction within ignosticism. If possible, can you supply me with short, direct answers to these questions? Just acceptance or rejection of said postulates?

Me: I think this is correct (note: substitute anything for nothing to avoid the double negative, and then your meaning becomes clear). I would add that if something is unavailable to our human senses, however, we would not know it except, perhaps, indirectly. Like dark matter, for example. But then again, even dark matter is indirectly observed via our sense of vision when we look for gravitational lensing effects it has on light. I suppose if something was completely unavailable to our senses then we would not know it exists, and therefore it might as well not exist.

Granted, this doesn't mean that something which is unavailable to our senses couldn't possibly exist. Anything is possible, but not everything is plausible. Since it would seem to not exist, being unable to perceive it, and we would have no way to prove it did exist, not even indirectly, then to talk about it as something which exists would be illogical. It would also, as a consequence of its imperceptibility, be rendered completely irrelevant thus a moot topic ergo meaningless.

As far as ignosticism is concerned, we need not worry about things unavailable to our senses. Ignosticism deals only with things we can generate valid descriptions of, whether substantive or conceptual.

As such, we could say that substantive descriptions, being substantive, wouldn't diverge from one another (at least not enough to cause any concerns) whereas conceptual descriptions will diverge since every conceptualization is created differently, thus contains differing features, which thus explains any dissimilarities we might find between competing conceptualizations of the same thing.

If "God" was a substantive noun, we'd be able to all describe God in the same way. But this doesn't seem to be the case. Most descriptions of God diverge. And this divergence can be great or miniscule, but the trend of the descriptions assigned seem to be conceptions derived not from the observation of the thing itself but as a means to create a conceptualization in lieu of the things absence.

Wherever the conceptualizations seem to overlap we can safely assume they do so because the conceptualization itself shares features, called templates, but not because they have derived these features from what they purport to describe. They have simply made up a template which they find appealing, and others might generate similar templates, and this describes the overlap. But the templates themselves are still divergent -- that is, instead of moving toward any agreement they continue to grow dissimilar.

Rocky: Next, if God exists and is foundationally exterior to the universe (its root cause), why would you expect that our understanding of God to somehow become more illumined by processes of understanding that have to be limited by finite minds that must necessarily operate at a lower level of complexity or awareness?

Me: In the hypothetical you propose, you make the following assumptions: 1) God exists; 2) God is foundational to the existence of the universe; 3) God is the cause of said universe; 4) God is beyond human understanding.

I don't think I need to explain why we should not waste our time on addressing these particular presuppositions in a discussion about ignosticism. After all, ignosticism's position is that you cannot know what it is the term "God" even means! So we cannot even begin to talk about these until this issue is resolved. That's the argument at hand.

(Note: I am not being dismissive here simply to be mean to believers. I am dismissing these topics because they are defeated by ignosticism's premise. Separately, apart from a discussion on ignosticism, they may be fine theological and philosophical topics of discussion. These topics have their place and time to be discussed, certainly, but here I am mainly concerned with defending ignosticism and laying the foundation for a logical argument from semantics against the comprehensibility of God.)

Rocky: Are you asserting that God, if it exists, must avail itself of full human comprehension? Explain why that should be a criteria of assessing whether or not the concept of God should be discarded.

Me: The reason that God's comprehensibility is a requisite of whether or not the concept should be discarded is precisely that if God did exist yet was completely incomprehensible then there would be no way to make sense of God's existence or talk about God in any meaningful way.

One might argue that it's not a black and white case. That it may simply be a case of the elephant in the room. We merely dimly perceive God, and because we can only vaguely piece together constituent parts of a greater whole, it's not that God's incomprehensibility is due to any trait of his existence but due to our limited knowledge of the bigger picture.

I understand the objection here, but it's not valid. It's not valid because if God were to exist, then our experience we have of God is the only way to make sense of God, thus the only way to talk about God, and if all we can talk about devolves into a meaningless, incomprehensible, jumble of fragmented ideas without a means to ever improve our understanding of him then you have a big problem. You are saying you are perceiving something but you can't quite make it out through the fog of imperceptibility, but yet you choose to call it God. Why? And then you're back to square one.

As far as the ignostic is concerned, in such a case, this itself provides a valid description of God. In fact, it may be the only logically consistent description of God which believers can agree on. Mainly that God is beyond our limited understanding.

If this is true, then what use is it to talk about God? Everything you mentioned in your list of presuppositions about the nature of God would be rendered erroneous based on your assumption that God is too complex to comprehend or is, somehow, beyond human understanding. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

Rocky: You are making some very large postulational assertions.

Me: I don't think that I am. I would argue that I am making very reasonable objections here.

First of all, they are logically consistent and sound objections. What about the premise that theists likely assume more than they can know about God sounds illogical to you? What about the premise that descriptions of God should be consistent and match when two believers are describing the same God sounds problematic to you? As far as postulates go, it seems these are valid.

Secondly, ignosticism is a very simple and straight forward argument. But it is not a well known one, which might explain some of the confusion people have when they first encounter it. Third, to make matters worse semantics and linguistics are confusing to those who are not accustomed to them, just as mathematics looks indistinguishable from Greek (i.e., it's all Greek to me) to those unfamiliar with it. But in the end, it's why I choose to write on the topics of ignosticism, semantics, and linguistics as they relate to God as commonly talked about in our language that uses semantics and linguistics to express these kinds of ideas.

That said, my assertions are straight forward and to the point. Two descriptions of the same thing should match. If they don't match there is a problem. There are two reasons we can point to for why this dissimilarity might arise. Accounting for these, we have to re-evaluate the question of how we use and talk about "God" in our language.

This seems to me to be a very reasonable position.

Rocky: I'd like to see defense of those in a rigorous logical sense instead of just more descriptions of ignosticism.

Me: I have provided just that. But when someone misconstrues ignosticism and ignores its objections, I think you'll find it is necessary to restate its premises, which does include describing it all over again.

Rocky: Finally, are you claiming that we can make any intellectual progress without some form of faith?

Me: No. And I never said that.

Rocky: Every decision that we make involves an article of faith on some level or another.

Me: It must, after all, you have to have faith in your own claims in order for you (yourself) to take those claims at face value!

Rocky: You cannot intellectually survive without faith.

Me: It depends on what you mean by "faith." If you mean religious or spiritual faith, then I would argue this is a category error. If you simply mean confidence in our belief assumptions, in the philosophical sense, then I'd be more inclined to agree.

Rocky: Faith in the reliability of the efficacy of logic, faith in the ever predictable intelligibility of the physical universe; faith that your sense perceptions are valid enough to support your intellectual investigations, faith that every single postulate that cannot be absolutely proven in your logic train can still be universally agreed upon as valid

Me: The way you use faith here, in the philosophical sense of having confidence in our belief propositions, I would agree with you as to its fundamental importance in all of the above.

Rocky: Why should faith in God be the only suspect category?

Me: Because this isn't the same sort of faith. Belief in God is religious faith, or the belief in something based on insufficient evidence (i.e., conviction not proof -- which is the dictionary definition of faith, FYI).

Now, you might object and say, no, faith in God is an intellectual endeavor as well as a spiritual or religious experience. Well, I guess you'll have to have faith in that claim as well. But, perhaps, instead of merely expressing your strongly held faith in God, you can use the above tools of logic, knowledge of the physical universe, your sense and awareness, and your intellect, to substantiate your faith thereby take it to the point of being a veritable truth, so that instead of having faith you have understanding.